Much like The Daily Bugle, this issue really needed a better editor.  The first nine pages of this issue (not including the four ads) should have been cut to, at most, a single page.  Maybe Waid is trying to convey that even Peter Parker isn’t always funny, and drags a joke for waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long, but it’s just too much unfunny for too long.  Even the art in the first few pages don’t match up with Azaceta’s previous work.  The panel where Spidey hurts his shoulder makes him look like a three hundred pound acrobat with a disturbingly large lower set of ribs.

Past that, the issue improves a bit.  But just a bit.  Unlike the abysmal Morbius issue a couple of weeks ago, this issue at least pushes the story into some potentially very interesting territory, but both the art and the panel to panel writing feel rushed in a way that I don’t ever remember noticing in a Mark Waid story.

I did note on the title page (and, really, I wish more comics would return to having the minutia on the first page), that there is a “with” writer (Tom Peyer), and a “with” artist (Javier Rodriguez), so maybe this issue is an example of on-the-job-training for a writer and an artist, while kipping some big names on the cover.